


Fae Child

by DustySoul



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Family, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-02 15:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5252750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustySoul/pseuds/DustySoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's a changeling, cursed, alone. It's her fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fae Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [izzybeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzybeth/gifts).



She tried to make a family once.

Here, in this place that feels like it should be home, was once home… Where her father makes breakfast and talks to her like she’s an angel… Where she grew up and laughed and played… Where her mother braided her hair and told her bed time stories… Where… Where…

She tried to make a family.

She failed.

 

She’s a changeling. Her mother’s daughter was stollen and replaced with her. She was a curse - is cursed. She killed half of the family she was born to - stolen to. She didn’t believe it, that this was her fate, that this was what she was. Not until…

But she knows it now. And hadn’t she once sworn she’d never make that mistake again?

It’s not a heavy burden. Live alone and in exchange never have to watch someone else die.

It’s all fine. She pays her sacrifice. It cuts deeper than if blood had been demanded of her but she will bare it. It’s how she lives, holding the world at arm’s length. That is, until she’s wrapped up in someone else’s world. Life. Mind. Tangled inextricably up ~~with someone else~~ , with so many others.

And even then it seems like she’s allowed this. She breathes in the air of another city, country, _continent_ and tastes their sour beer.

If she’s a changeling than maybe so is he. Which must be why this is allowed. That’s what she thinks.

Until she wakes up drugged and covered in someone else’s blood.

 

It's been six months since she was saved. Six months. She’s changed her name ten times and been in twelve different countries. She’s running away. Hasn’t she always been running away?

Her apartment is bare, there’s more dust than furniture. She’s dozing in an old arm chair, her sore feet tucked under her body, a frayed blanket thrown across her lap. She’s exhausted after a shift of waiting tables. This moment of rest is the one part of the day where she feels normal, where she feels like she might have never existed before this moment, might never have shared her thoughts with so many other people… Might never have been kidnapped. Might never have been a changeling.

Maybe she’s truly her mother’s daughter.

She might be running.

She’ll always be running.

What Will, if he was ever awake, or Capheus might say to her she doesn’t know. Though she remembers seeing Chicago and tasting tea for the hundredth time and for the first time.

 

And, while dozing, she comes to notice that the chair beneath her and at her back has grown hard and cold. She opens her eyes. She’s not in… which ever country she’d been living in. This is a cell. There’s Sun, across from her in a mirror of Riley’s own position.

“Why so sad?” Riley asks her, suddenly overwhelmed by her own compassion. And it of course reminds her of her own sadness, why she pulled away from the cluster.

Sun looks at her and after a long silence says, “My brother killed my father.”

Riley feels her anger, her despair, and the depths of what as happened.

“I’m sorry.”

“And you?” Sun asks.

Riley swallows, “I’m a changeling, I’m cursed.” She rubs her eyes. But unlike Sun, her words continue to spill out, “If it wasn’t for me… Whispers would have never gotten Will. They’d- they’d still barely know about us. We’d be safe. My… my mother, my husband, my daughter -  my baby girl - little Luna…” She can feel herself crying, can see that Sun’s eyes are shinning though no muscle in her face as moved.

“I’m sorry.”

They sit then, in silence, until they fade away.

Riley wakes feeling as if the world as been lifted from her shoulders. She goes about her evening routine.

 

Capheus comes to her the next night. They drink tea and he pets her hair.

“It’s so… it’s like thread. It’s silkier than thread.”

It makes Riley smile, “Is this first time you’ve seen hair like mine?”

“Seen it? No. Felt it, yes. And why is it blue? It doesn’t grow that way , does it?”

“No, I dye it. See the roots?”

“Hmm. Why?”

“Why not? If you could make your hair any color wouldn’t you?”

“Sure.”

“What color?”

“Hmm?”

“Would you make your hair?”

“Oh, striped.”

“Striped isn’t a color.”

“Black and white.”

“Like a zebra?”

“Like a zebra, indeed.”

 

Lito takes her on long walks across a foreign coast line.

“You can’t change what you are. And you can’t change what happened. But you can affect what comes next.”

“Fate.”

“Fate can be changed.”

“You believe that?”

“I do. People weren’t made to suffer.”

“No offense, but I think you should leave the philosophizing to your boyfriend.”

“I did. I asked him what to say.”

“How?”

“I was a little vague. Too vague, you think?”

She laughs for the first time, barely more than a breathy snort.

 

She sees Nomi later that week. 

“How’s Will?” She asks.

“It’s okay.” Nomi tells her. “He’s fine. I’m still figuring out how to keep him safe and awake.”

“What’s okay?”

Nomi smiles at her. “That you don’t know if you want to see him anymore.”

“Of course I do.” Riley whispers.

Nomi hugs her. “It’s okay… You’re okay.”

 

Some days Sun is so angry feels like Riley’s blood might boil. Lito is in love. Some days it’s tender, a light caress and a kiss good-bye. Some days it’s passionate, consuming, like a different kind of fire through her veins. Most days Capheus is happy. He’s got the bus and the open road and he calls these things home. Nomi is focused, determined and her emotions ebb and flow, just under the surface. Annoyed at a set back. Satisfied. Surprised. Elated.

Slowly it reminds Riley how to feel again.

 

She feels the day Will wakes - drugged panic. And she’s there in a heart beat, crouching at his side.

“We’re alive, safe.” She tells him, over come with the swell of emotions. Crunching bones, a rose blooming, her heart racing, the sunrise on the horizon, Nomi infront of her computer - typing like the word world is counting on her.

“He’s here.”

“I know.”

The rest of the cluster joins her. “So are we.” Promises Nomi.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Damn this was really, really hard to write. I'm sorry it's so short but I just had NO idea for plot. I think I should just accept that all my gift fics are going to turn out like this... Anyway I hope you like it? UGH >.


End file.
